Backing Up Your Mac

Ever accidentally deleted an important file, experienced a drive failure or discovered computers don't drink coffee? Reliable backups protect you from losing your irreplaceable data. Today's blog post is an unbiased overview of all the popular backup options available to Mac users.

Syncing Services & "The Cloud"

It is important to point out that many syncing services (e.g. Dropbox, Resilio Sync, etc.) can also be configured to act as somewhat of a backup. Since that is not their intended use I have not included them in this overview.

Several of the backup solutions below store data with the vendor (cloud backup). As security breaches have become common place, trusting vendors and their ability to protect user data has never been more challenging. For this reason many vendors allow advanced users to take ownership of the encryption key, preventing anyone but the user from accessing the data.

Time Machine is built into macOS making it very easy to back up your Mac.

Key Points

Unlike most alternatives, Time Machine includes both system files and user data.

Supports multiple backup destinations, allowing for geographically separated backup drives (e.g. one at work and one at home).

Compatible with Migration Assistant making the process of restoring data to a new Mac easy.

Theoretically supports backing up to network shares (e.g. AirPort Time Capsule, server or NAS), in practice I have found it unreliable.

Support for Power Nap, allowing backups to occur while the Mac is asleep.

Data Retention

Hourly backups for the past 24 hours.

Daily backups for the past month.

Weekly backups for all previous months.

The oldest backups are deleted when the backup disk becomes full.

User Experience

Setup

To start using Time Machine simply purchase an external hard drive (any brand), plug it into your Mac and click Use as Backup Disk. It is also advisable to select the Encrypt Backup Disk checkbox, preventing anyone from accessing your backup data without a password.

After that backing up is as simple as plugging in a USB.

Restoring Data

Enter Time Machine (Recommended)

Open Launchpad > Other > Time Machine > On the right select the date you wish to go back to > Select the files you wish to recover and click Restore.

Finder

In Finder select the name of the backup disk in the sidebar > Backups.backupdb > COMPUTERNAME > Select the date you wish to go back to > Copy and paste the files you wish to restore.

Unfortunately, Code42 the creators of CrashPlan now only offer backup solutions for small business and enterprise markets. Although this is not for individuals, business owners would benefit from considering CrashPlan for their backup needs.

Key Points

Support for all the major platforms (macOS, Windows and Linux).

By default only the user's home directory is backed up.

Australians back up to CrashPlan's Sydney data centre.

CrashPlan can also be configured to back up to a local disk.

CrashPlan for Small Business targets businesses with less than 200 employees.

Data Retention

Data retention is user configurable, backup storage with CrashPlan is unlimited and by default all user files are retained!

User Experience

Setup

Sign into the app and select a backup destination (e.g. CrashPlan PRO Australia).

Restoring Data

CrashPlan App (Recommend)

Open CrashPlan app from the Launchpad > Click Get Files, select the date you wish to restore from and select files you wish to restore. By default, files are restored to the Downloads folder, but this can be set to the files original location or another directory.

CrashPlan Web Restore

Sign into the CrashPlan website > Select Devices > Active > Click the restore icon next to the relevant computer > Choose the date and the files you wish to restore.

Backblaze is a cost effective cloud backup solution.

Key Points

Supports both macOS and Windows.

Includes a Locate My Computer feature similar to Find My Mac.

Data Retention

Unlimited storage.

Backblaze only keeps copies of files for 30 days after deletion.

External drives being backed up to Backblaze must be connected at least once every 30 days to avoid backup deletion.

If the computer running Backblaze does not connect to Backblaze's servers within 6 months all backup data is deleted.